Craniometry and Racial Identity

8/8/2019 Craniometry and Racial Identity

1/16

CRANIOMETRY AND RACIAL IDENTITY

IN INTERWAR TRANSYLVANIA*

Marius Turda

Oxford Brookes University

Introduction

The entanglement of racial anthropology with nationalism is particularlyimportant to understand considering that there has always been ambivalence in theway in which racial anthropologists viewed their own nation. The development of ascientific worldview of race in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries contributedgreatly to the emergence of a new idea of nation one seen in organic, biologicalterms. Paralleling the aspirations for a great historical destiny, the nation could nowclaim uniqueness in terms of racial qualities. Ultimately, the story of Romaniananthropology in Transylvania during the interwar period reflects the competition oftwo mutually exclusive ambitions: the encroaching ambition of the state upon the

body of the nation as a whole; and the less successful ambition of the ethnic

communities of Transylvania to translate their common history into reality.Accounts of interwar Romania generally neglect racial anthropology1. Anexamination of racial anthropology, in fact, compels a re-examination of thetheoretical contexts which shaped interwar discussions of the nation. This approachcontrasts with that adopted by other scholars working on this period, such asKatherine Verdery, Keith Hitchins or Lszl Krti2. Although these scholars haveshaped the current historiographic narratives about interwar Romania, their

* Research for this paper was sponsored by the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship. Ishould also like to express my thanks to Matt Feldman for his suggestions and remarks.

1 The only reference is to the relationship between political movements, like anti-Semitism andfascism, and racism. See Radu Ioanid, The Sword of the Archangel. Fascist Ideology in Romania,

Boulder, CO., Columbia University Press, 1990.2 See Katherine Verdery,National Ideology and National Character in Interwar Romania, in National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe, Ivo Banac and KatherineVerdery eds.,New Haven, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1995, p. 103-133; KeithHitchins, Orthodoxism. Polemics over Ethnicity and Religion in Interwar Romania, ibidem, p. 135-156; Lszl Krti, The Remote Borderland: Transylvania in the Hungarian Imagination, New York,State University of New York Press, 2001.

Anuarul Institutului de Istorie G. Bari din Cluj-Napoca, tom. XLV, 2006, p. 123138


2/16

Marius Turda 2124

reluctance to explain the existence of racial tropes in what Katherine Verdery callsthe production of the nation in Romania, are indicative of a scholarly difficulty inaddressing the complex relationship between politics and cultural production. Thisis partly the product of difficulties intrinsic to identifying the elusive nature ofracism within Romanian nationalist discourses; more overtly, however, this is theresult of an imperfect and partial assessment of texts on national identity producedin the interwar period3.

Racial Representations of the Nation

Scholars dealing with interwar Romania largely agree that the two main

sources for the creation of national identity were literary texts and historicalsymbols. According to this view, participants in the debate about the nationappropriated themes and characters that were created by successive generations of

poets, artists, and scholars. The narratives of national belonging thus functioned ata discursive level4. Anthropologists, on the other hand, represented and viewedobjects such as crania and archaeological artefacts and conducted technicalexperiments such as cataloguing and classifying the blood-groups of the populationin order to create what they considered to be scientific knowledge about the nation.In other words, racial anthropology aimed at creating a graphic ontology, whereasthe physical characterisation of the nation was seen to provide a certain source ofknowledge. These graphic representations of the nation allowed anthropologists toengage in allegedly objective incursions into the ethnic fabric of society,

comparing their interpretations of national identity with those viewed as moresubjective, particularly literary texts.

Therefore, it must be recognised that racial anthropologists were subject toincreasing critical pressure: in the interwar period the nation as object captured theattention of specialists and lay commentators alike, from sceptical believers in thehistorical destiny of both nations to those obsessed with the genius of the nation.

3 To her credit, nevertheless, in the introduction toNational Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe, Katherine Verdery touches upon the distinction between racial (based oninnate characteristics) and cultural national identity (formed by social experience). In her view, thesalient distinction between the two forms is not whether they refer to physicalversus culturaldifferencebut whether they presume that difference is immutable vs. mutable. That is, a racist ideology is one that

classifies a person on the bases of what are socially presumed to be unchangeable characteristics, likeskin colour, as distinct from other ideologies that classify on the basis of criteria that are at least in theorychangeable. See Katherine Verdery, Introduction, in National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe, Ivo Banac and Katherine Verdery eds., p. XVII, note 9. Unfortunately, shedoes not employ this distinction when discussing national character in interwar Romania.

4 All studies dealing with nationalism concur on this issue. I mention only two of the mostquoted references: Benedict Anderson,Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spreadof Nationalism, London, Verso, 1983, and Nation and Narration, Homi Bhabha ed., New York,Routledge, 1990.


3/16

3 Craniometry and racial identity in interwar Transylvania 125

Yet as all concerned soon came to realise one could not appeal to the reputation ofracial anthropology without disrupting the monopoly on the discursive productionof the nation created by other institutionalised disciplines like history and literature.As anthropology was brought under nationalist scrutiny and made the basis forracial thinking, its scientific pretensions were increasingly constrained bynumerous conflicts. This was the case mainly because the graphic representation ofthe nation envisioned by racial anthropology was bound to find itself struggling forrecognition in the field of nationalist construction5. By entering this contested field,racial anthropologists were therefore compelled to articulate an interpretation of thenation based on previously unexplored sources. In the following, I shall devoteattention to one of these sources: craniometry.

With the emergence of national schools of anthropology in the nineteenth

century, the idea of racial origins hitherto cultivated by historiography andliterature was given a new impetus. To be sure, speculations about the role of racein shaping the destiny and history of peoples characterised the development ofevery European nation6. Racial anthropology manoeuvred these narratives ofhistorical experience and cultural tradition towards the idea of an essential racialcore of the nation. The nation thus came to embody great physical qualities,symbols of innate virtues transmitted from generation to generation. Once endowedwith a noble genealogy, the nation was then assigned particular physicalcharacteristics. The nation consequently became a visible, quantifiable entity:testable characteristics of the human body, such as the cranium or the compositionof blood, were transformed into speculative ideas about the nation. Henceforth,

illumination about its descriptions had to come from an understanding of itsphysical structure and functions.The new idea of the nation was also inseparable from racial anatomy.

However, the racial terminology employed was rather fluid and was furtherundermined by divergent interpretations. Indeed, during the interwar period, racewas severely criticised for its conceptual laxity. Accordingly, Romanian racialanthropologists struggled to formulate a definition of race able to encompass boththe latest developments in racial science and salient local, nationalist tradition.Race was thus both a physical entity described by French naturalist andanthropologist, Joseph Deniker (1852-1918) as being the sum-total ofsomatological characteristics once met with in a real union of individuals, nowscattered in fragments of varying proportions among several ethnic groups, from

5 Improvements in anthropologys social and scientific status were not accompanied by majorattempts to institutionalise the discipline. The Romanian Institute of Anthropology was established onlyin 1940. See Gh. Pavelescu,Etnografia romneasc din Ardeal n ultimii douzeci de ani (1919-1939),in Gnd romnesc, 7, 1939, p. 462-470 and Ion Chelcea,Le mouvement ethnographique et folkloriqueen ces dernires annes, in Archives pour la Science et la Rforme Sociale, 16 (1943), p. 363-369.

6 Paul Conlinvaux, The Fates of Nations. A Biological Theory of History, New York, Simon &Schuster, 1980.


4/16

Marius Turda 4126

which it can no longer be differentiated except by a process of delicate analysis7

and a historical symbiosis, both physical and spiritual; the result of specificgeographical conditions8.

Craniometry and Racial Cartography: The Dacian Type

As many anthropologists of the period recognised, there was no consensusabout what constituted race, let alone how many races populated Europe. Attemptsto work through this problem are detectable in the effort to standardise racialcartography. Here, three models of racial mapping competed for prominence. Thefirst was proposed by Joseph Deniker, who identified six primary races: Northern,

Eastern, Ibero-Insular, Western or Cenevole, Littoral or Atlanto-Mediterranean,and Adriatic or Dinaric; along with four sub-races: sub-Northern, Vistulian, North-Western, and sub-Adriatic9. Another model was outlined by the American racialcartographer William Z. Ripley (1867-1941), who insisted that there were onlythree European races Teutonic, Alpine (Celtic) and Mediterranean10. In turn, theGerman racial anthropologist Hans F. K. Gnther (1891-1968), suggested thatthere were five European races: Nordic, Western, Dinaric, Eastern and Baltic11.Importantly, all three authors considered the cephalic index to be a reliableinstrument for classification, meaning that what differentiated races was ultimatelycranial capacity: some were dolichocephalic (mainly the Northern and Ibero-Insular); others were brachycephalic (the Eastern, Western and Dinaric); and,finally, some were mesocephalic12.

Craniology was extremely popular in the nineteenth century. In 1842, theSwedish anatomist Anders Retzius (1796-1860) first used the ratio of width tolength in order to distinguish between dolichocephalic and brachycephalic crania,thus establishing a craniological comparative study of racial groups (see figure 1).

7 J. Deniker, The Races of Man. An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography , London,Walter Scott Ltd., 1900, p. 8.

8 During the interwar period the most enticing definition of race as a spiritual category wasoffered by the poet and philosopher Lucian Blaga (1895-1961). See for example Lucian Blaga,Despre ras ca stil, in Gndirea,XIV, 2 (1935), p. 69-84.

9 J. Deniker, The Races of Man. An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography , London,Walter Scott Ltd., 1900.

10 William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe. A Sociological Study , New York, D. Appleton and

Company, 1899.11 Hans F. K. Gnther,Rassenkunde Europas, 2nd ed., Mnchen, J. F. Lehmanns, 1926.12 The respected Hungarian anatomist, Mihly Lenhossk (1863-1937), extensively reviewed

Denikers and Ripleys theories in two articles he devoted to the development of Hungariananthropology. See Mihly Lenhossk,A magyarsg anthropolgiai vizsglata, in TermszettudomnyiKzlny 47, 1915, p.639-640, 757-783; and Eurpa lakossgnak eredete s fajbeli sszettele, inTermszettudomnyi Kzlny, 50, 697-698 (1918): 269-293. For the Romanian evaluation, seeIordache Fcoaru, Socialanthropologia ca tiin pragmatic, in Buletin eugenic i biopolitic, 9,9-10 (1938), p. 352-365.


5/16


It was thereafter assumed that craniology could provide a basis for claims thatoriginal, pure races had their corresponding, homogeneous cranial features, eitherdolichocephalic or brachycephalic. Racial purity could also be documented throughcraniometrical analysis: arithmetic average could reveal whether the racial typewas pure or cross-bred. Craniologists assumed that the more measurements andindexes of racial type to near the arithmetic average value, the more a given racialtype could be understood as pure; conversely, the more a racial type diverged fromthis ideal average, the more cross-bred it was13.

Fig. 1. Eugne Pittard: The Brachycephalic and Dolicocephalic CraniaFromLes Peuples des Balkans. Esquisses Anthropologique (1916).

13 See the critique provided by G. M. Morant, A Preliminary Classification of European RacesBased on Cranial Measurements, in Biometrika, 20, 3-4 (1928), p. 301-375.


6/16

Marius Turda 6128

Retzius system suffered successive transformations, including new indexcategories, as well as various combinations between the cephalic index and thefacial index. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, craniometry could claimthe support of such diverse scholars as the German pathologist, Rudolf Virchow(1821-1902), and the English statistician, Karl Pearson (1857-1936). It was alsoduring this period that growing scepticism with respect to the utility of cranialresearch for racial purposes led many leading anthropologists to question itsscientific credentials14.

Craniology, like any other form of racial research during the interwar period,had strong ideological connotations. For example, an oft-voiced motiveunderpinning Romanian racial anthropology was the notion that the territories

constituting Greater Romania had been frequently invaded (from the Romans ofthe Antiquity to the Magyars of the Middle Ages and the Jews of modern times).This idea was neither new nor specifically Romanian: the countries of Central andSoutheast Europe (especially the Balkans) have been repeatedly singled out asextremely heterogeneous ethnic regions. But Romanians were rather late in

producing a common racial narrative for their territories, which had been the focusof other competing racial anthropologies before 1918 (Hungarian, German,Serbian, Bulgarian or Russian)15. Not surprisingly, it was a French anthropologist,Eugne Pittard (1867-1962), who produced one of the first racial researches inTransylvania after 191816. In Recherches anthropologiques sur les Roumains deTransylvanie, Pittard endeavoured to verify the claim that Romanians from the Old

Kingdom were dolichocephalic, whilst those from Bukovina and Transylvaniawere brachycephalic17.In parallel, racial research focused on the differences between the cranial

characteristics of Romanians and Hungarians in Transylvania. Thus, the Hungariananatomist, Jen Davida (1884-1929), contributed to the discussion with an articleentitled Beitrge zur Kraniologie der Magyaren und der siebenbrgischenWalachen. Davida used the cranial collection, already existing at the HungarianUniversity of Cluj (Kolozsvr) prior to 1919, within which he thought that he had

14 In 1890, the Hungarian anthropologist, Aurel Trk (1842-1912), produced one of the mostsubstantial critiques of craniometry, Grundzge einer systematischen Kraniometrie - arguably themost detailed craniological analysis of a single skull: 5371 measurements. See Aurel V. Trk,

Grundzge einer Systematischen Kraniometrie, Stuttgart, Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1890.15 See for example Jovan Cviji, La Pninsule Balkanique. Gographie humaine, Paris,Libraire Armand Colin, 1918.

16 Already in 1916 Pittard produced a survey of the peoples in the Balkans, which he analysedfrom the perspectives of racial anthropology. See Eugne Pittard,Les Peuples des Balkans. EsquissesAnthropologique, Paris, Neuchatel, 1916.

17 Eugne Pittard,Recherches anthropologiques sur les Roumains de Transylvanie, in Revueanthropologique,29, 3-4 (1919), p. 57-76. He presented the same arguments in his La Roumanie,Paris, ditions Bossard, 1917.


7/16


found pure Hungarian and Romanian crania. Those Hungarian came from largelyProtestant communities, whilst the Romanian crania were collected from Greek-Orthodox and Greek-Catholic communities18. A similar argument was advanced bythe Romanian physician and anatomist, Victor Papilian (1888-1956), in one of hisarticles, Nouvelles recherches anthropologiques sur la tte des Roumains deTransylvanie. Papilian hoped to demonstrate the existence of specialcephalometric characteristics amongst Romanians in Transylvania. He reached thefollowing conclusions: the cranial characteristics of Romanians from Transylvaniadiffered from both those of Romanians in the Old Kingdom and Hungarians inTransylvania; compared with to the latter groups, the former werehyperbrachephalic and mesocephalic19.

Given the use of the tandem dolichocephalic-brachycephalic in most of theanalytical discourses on anthropological writings dealing with ethnic groups inTransylvania particularly the alleged racial divide between Romanians from theOld Kingdom and those from the newly united provinces, as well as betweenRomanians and Hungarians the conclusions reached by craniometry were

politically contested. One radical interpretation was produced by the sociologistand anthropologist, Ion Chelcea (1902-1991), in his study, Tipuri de craniiromneti din Ardeal (Cercetare antropologic)20. Chelcea based his analysis onthe crania collection existing in the Museum of Natural History in Vienna,assembled by the Austrian anthropologist, Augustin Weisbach (1836-1914) in thesecond half of the nineteenth century. Chelcea pushed his craniological research to

a more unorthodox level than Pittard, Davida or Papilian. Methodologically, hefollowed the craniological principles outlined by the German anthropologist,Rudolf Martin (1864-1925) in his 1914 Lehrbuch der Anthropologie, namelyindividual measurements of cranium (length, breadth, diameter, and so on)21. Basedon these principles, Chelcea grouped Romanian crania into five racial types:Roman-Mediterranean (or Ibero-Mediterranean); Nordic, Kurgan, Dinaric, Dacian,and Avar-Turanic (see Figure 2)22. Practically, however, he followed the Romaniannationalist tradition, and thus suggested the existence of a Dacian racial type,which was to be found especially amongst the inhabitants of the Apuseni (Western)Mountains in Transylvania. (See Figures 3 and 4)

18

Jen Davida,Beitrge zur Kraniologie der Magyaren und der siebenbrgischen Walachen,in Anatomischer Anzeiger, 66, 1-3 (1928), p. 30-42.19 Victor Papilian, Nouvelles recherches anthropologiques sur la tte des Roumains de

Transylvanie, in Revue anthropologique, 33, 9-10 (1923), p. 337-341.20 Ion Chelcea, Tipuri de cranii romneti din Ardeal (Cercetare antropologic), in

Memoriile Seciunii tiinifice, seria 3, vol. 10 (1934/35), p. 341-368.21 Rudolf Martin, Lehrbuch der Anthropologie in systematischer Darstellung mit besonderer

Bercksichtigung der anthropologischen Methoden, Jena, Gustav Fischer, 1914.22 I. Chelcea, Tipuri de cranii romneti din Ardeal (Cercetare antropologic), p. 360-362.


8/16

Marius Turda 8130

Fig. 2. Ion Chelcea: Racial Indexes for Different Races from Tipuri de cranii romneti din Ardeal(Cercetare antropologic) (1934/1935).


9/16


Fig. 3. Ion Chelcea: The Racial Indexes of the Dacian TypeFrom Tipuri de cranii romneti din Ardeal (Cercetare antropologic) (1934/1935).

Fig. 4. Ion Chelcea: The Dacian TypeFrom Tipuri de cranii romneti din Ardeal (Cercetare antropologic) (1934/1935).


10/16

Marius Turda 10132

This obsession with craniology was disseminated so as to make the racist logicof anthropology seem natural. As played out in the conceptions about racial belonging outlined in his article, the anthropological permutations in Chelceasreasoning suggest that he was following a specific anthropological tradition, for hefound it perfectly possible to differentiate between Romanian crania fromTransylvania and the rest of Romania. However, as Figure 4 shows, Chelceasdescription of Dacian cranial characteristics bears more than a passing resemblanceto other anthropological writings. The graphic illustration of this resemblance doesnot only bespeak a direct influence, but also is testimony to the way that racialanthropology turned nationalist, and became obsessed with racial origins.

Yet to recognise the disturbing insistence with racial attributes, one mustinvestigate racial studies not only in their most technical formulations (charts,

diagrams, mathematical equations and so on) but also in the popularly reiteratedimages that traversed interwar philosophy, literature, and medicine, amongst otherfields of study23. In other contemporary responses to this problem, writers,

philosophers and sociologists often imagined national metamorphoses based onreal or imaginary racial content24. More generally, discussions on national essencein the interwar period frequently returned to an emphasis on nationalmetamorphosis, as this was an image through which the assumptions of racialindividuality could be correlated with the recognition of ethnic diversity. The

problem of national essence was especially exacerbated at the juncture of racialindividuality and ethnic diversity, for it was here that fundamental relation betweenmajority and minority was articulated; and during this period, racial anthropologywas the mechanism called upon to perform this articulation.

Eugenics and Racial Identity in Transylvania

Within the general racial representations of the Romanians, the racialeugenicist Iordache Fcoaru helped to construct a second tradition,complementary to yet distinct from that set out by other scholars. He criticised theracial typologies proposed by foreign researches, like the Austrian ethnologistViktor Lebzelter (1889-1936) for example25, and proposed a more rigorous analysisof Romanian racial characteristics. Furthermore, whereas Chelcea or Davidaexpressed restrained interest in connecting racial anthropology with territorialclaims, Fcoaru responded by constructing a Romanian racial ontology, including

23 For the relationship between racial anthropology and eugenics in interwar Romania seeMaria Bucur,Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania, Pittsburgh, University of PittsburghPress, 2002.

24 See for example Ion Foti, Concepia eroic a rasei, Bucureti, Biblioteca Eroic Generaianou, 1936; and Alexandru Randa,Rasism romnesc, Bucureti, I.E. Torouiu, 1941.

25 See Viktor Lebzelter, La Rpartition des Types Raciaux Romano-Mditerranens enRoumanie, in LAnthropologie, 45, 1-2 (1935), p. 65-69.


11/16


all territories where Romanians could be found26

. The racial history of Romanians became for him an occasion for an investigation into the relationship betweenheredity and nationalist reflection. A new national politics required a committedracial anthropology. As Fcoaru openly stated: In our national politics,anthropology has the role to clarify some of the most important issues concerningour political rights over the territory we possess and over territories we do not

possess27. In proffering this assumption, Fcoaru made clear reference to the newdirection in Romanian national politics, which had done so much to leadintellectuals and scientists of this period to re-evaluate their importance as

participants to the nationalist scene28. Furthermore, despite his critical attitudetowards foreign anthropological studies of Romanians, when it came to explaining

racial variety and composition, Fcoaru had to rely on the racial taxonomies produced by Deniker, Ripley and others. Such methodological strategy is mostvisible in Fcoarus most elaborated racial study, Criteriile pentru diagnozrasial (1935)29. He accepted six criteria for racial classification: height, thecephalic index, the facial index, the nasal index, eye colour, and hair colour (seeFigure 5). Based on these criteria, Fcoaru then identified four principal races:Alpine, Dinaric, Mediterranean and Nordic; and five secondary races: Dalic, East-European, Oriental, West-Asian and Indian30.

By the late 1930s, Fcoaru became not only a noted eugenicist but also ahighly-praised racial anthropologist. In 1939, he published an article inZeitschrift

fr Rassenkunde, the journal edited by the German racial anthropologist and Nazi

supporter, Freihher von Eickstedt (1892-1965), in which he assessed theimportance of economic and social contexts in the preservation of racialcharacteristics31. He further developed these arguments in the study of the racial

26 See Iordache Fcoaru, Cercetri antropologicice n patru sate din Transnistria.Unpublished manuscript (1943). Microfilm, Fond 2242, Opis no. 1, RG-31.004, Reel 4. HolocaustMemorial Museum Institute (I should like to thank Radu Ioanid and Carl Modig for their help inobtaining this manuscript). A similar perspective was advocated by another prominent Romanianeugenicist, Petru Rmneanu,Romnii dintre Morava i Timoc i continuitatea spaiului lor etnic cu alRomnilor din Banat i din Timocul bulgar, in Buletin eugenic i biopolitic, 12, 1-4 (1941), p. 40-62.

27 Iordache Fcoaru, Socialantropologia ca tiin pragmatist, in Buletin eugenic ibiopolitic,9, 9-10 (1938), p. 358.

28 For a discussion of the nationalist politics of interwar Romania see Irina Livezeanu, Cultural

Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Strife, 1918-1930, Ithaca,Cornell University Press, 1995.29 The study was first published as Criteriile pentru diagnoz rasial, in Buletin eugenic i

biopolitic 6, 10-11-12 (1935): 341-368; and then as a brochure in the collection edited by theInstitute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene from Cluj. See I. Fcoaru, Criteriile pentru diagnozrasial, Cluj, Tip. Universal, 1936.

30 I. Fcoaru, Criteriile pentru diagnoz rasial, p. 11-21.31 I. Fcoaru,Beitrag zum Studium der wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Bewhrung der Rassen,

Zeitschrift fr Rassenkunde,9, 1 (1939), p. 26-39.


12/16

Marius Turda 12134

structure of the rural population in Romania32

. Fcoaru was devoted to developinga bio-political programme, and one should locate his racial arguments within thisambition. The fact that racial differentiation and classification were explicitlycontextualised within the purpose of an ethno-pedagogy should alert us when itcomes to the use of categories such as science and politics in referring to interwarracial anthropology. Fcoaru made it clear that the final goal of racialanthropology was to determine the right to leadership of those superior, namelythose belonging to races deemed superior33. Fcoaru further developed his racialtheories into a synopsis of ethnic hierarchy in one of his most controversialarticles, Valoarea biorasial a naiunilor europene i a provinciilor romneti.There are three main ideas concerning Fcoaru in this article: racial composition,

racial hierarchy and Romanias racial diversity. All three ideas were based on therelationship between race, blood and spiritual achievements34.

In order to determine the racial composition of the main European nations,Fcoaru claimed to have synthesised the main racial theories of his time, andindeed he utilised no less than 25 racial terms in his study. Thus, for example,Bulgarians were composed of the following racial components: M41%; D-A24%;A15%; Pas-Mo12% and N8% (M=Mediterranean; D-A=Dinaric-Alpine;A=Alpine; Pas-Mo= Paleoasiatic-Mongoloid; and, finally, N=Nordic); Germanswere composed of N50%; A20%; D15%; E6%; O5%; M2%; L1%, Mo1%(E=East-European; O=Oriental; L=Lapoid); Romanians were composed of A29%;M19%; N14%; E12%; D11%; X10%; O3%; Da2% (Da=Dalic; X=Atlantid); whilst

Hungarians were composed of E35%; D20%; C-Mo20%; A15%, N5%, Mo4% andM1% (C-Mo=Caucasian-Mongoloid) (See Figure 5) 35.Next, Fcoaru surveyed the biological value of European races, namely

their biological and spiritual value. He divided them into over-endowed races(+), medium-endowed race (); and under-medium races (-). According to thisdiagram, Swedes were placed on the top of the chart with (+) 80%; () 0% and (-)20%; Romanians were sixth, based on the following data (+) 26%; () 33%; and (-)41%; whilst Hungarians occupied one of the last places, considering that they were

just (+) 5%; () 21%; and (-) 74% (See Figures 7 and 8)36.Finally, Fcoaru focused on the biological value of the Romanian

population from the geographical/historical regions constituting Romania, namely

32 I. Fcoaru, Structura rasial a populaiei rurale din Romnia, Bucureti, Tip. Curii RegaleF. Gbl, 1940.

33 I. Fcoaru, Structura rasial a populaiei rurale din Romnia, p. 16 (italics in original).34 I. Fcoaru, Valoarea biorasial a naiunilor europene i a provinciilor romneti, in

Buletin eugenic i biopolitic , 14, 9-10 (1943), p. 278-310.35Ibidem, p. 280-281. The less known Dalic and Atlantid races are sub-divisions of the

Nordic race.36Ibidem, p. 283.


13/16


Bukovina, the Banat, Transylvania, Criana-Maramure (termed the Western provinces); Moldavia, Bessarabia, Transnistria (the so-called Easternprovinces); and Oltenia, Muntenia and Dobrudja (or the Southern provinces).Both rural and urban populations (male and female) were examined, and Fcoaruemployed four criteria upon which the bio-racial level of these samples of the

population was established: economic efficiency, social mobility, military propensity, and spiritual development37. The conclusions are, as expected, thereflection of Fcoarus own nationalist commitment. Thus, the Western

provinces (Bukovina, Transylvania and the Banat) are at the highest biologicallevel; the Eastern provinces (Moldavia, Bessarabia and Transnistria) occupy anintermediary place, while the Southern provinces (Oltenia, Muntenia andDobrudja) are last. The rest of his conclusions suggest the same stereotypical andsimplistic vision: superior racial qualities are to be found amongst urban, educatedand wealthy social classes38.

Fig. 5. Iordache Fcoaru: Racial Diagnosis From Criteriile pentru diagnoz rasial(1935).

37 I. Fcoaru, Valoarea biorasial a naiunilor europene i a provinciilor romneti, p. 292.38Ibidem,p. 306-307.


14/16

Marius Turda 14136

Fig. 6. Iordache Fcoaru: Racial Composition of European NationsFrom Valoarea biorasial a naiunilor europene i a provinciilor romneti (1943).

Fig. 7. Iordache Fcoaru: Biological Value of European NationsFrom Valoarea biorasial a naiunilor europene i a provinciilor romneti (1943).


15/16


Fig. 8. Iordache Fcoaru: Biological Hierarchy of European NationsFrom Valoarea biorasial a naiunilor europene i a provinciilor romneti (1943).

Romanias racial diversity was a problem that fascinated protagonists of thedebate about the nation in interwar Romania. Not many followed Fcoarus radicalversion of national identity, but he communicated in racial terms what othersstruggled to express in poetic or philosophic terms39. Ultimately, what transpiredfrom Fcoarus racial analysis is the complete veneration for bi-polar and

stereotypical interpretations of the nation. It was taken for granted that, as there weresuperior and inferior races, there must be a racial engine of superior origin within thenation, and Fcoaru located it amongst the Romanians of Transylvania40.

39 The classical example can be found in the work of the Romanian poet and philosopher ofculture, Lucian Blaga (1895-1961), especially in his Trilogia Culturii (1944).

40 See also Iordache Fcoaru, Amestecul rasial i etnic n Romnia, in Buletin eugenic ibiopolitic, 9, 9-10 (1938), p. 276-287.


16/16

Marius Turda 16138

Related to Fcoarus theory of racial difference was another significantaspect characterising racial anthropology in interwar Romania: the existence of aspecific racial type. In fact, precisely the extent to which it was repeatedlyreiterated, this emphasis on racial singularity served continually to reproduce anideological distinction between social and somatic, political and biological aspectsof the nation. The racial type in its singularity posed the question of nationalmetamorphosis; that is, the process of viewing national belonging through a two-

pronged process: one internal (classification and differentiation); the other external(delineating relations to other racial groups). The particularity of the nation wasthen embodied in an ideal racial type, a hypostasis in which nationalmetamorphosis found its quintessential form in nature, culture and spirit.

Conclusion

In interwar Romania, an impressive emphasis was placed upon racialcharacteristics and their connection to physical mechanisms of identification andclassification. They were also associated with all the other processes intrinsic to thediscussion on national identity, such as national particularity, historical destiny,ethnic assimilation and racial supremacy. Moreover, to engage in discussions aboutnational essence and racial character during the interwar period was also to focuson physical descriptions, and thus on the nation as a physical entity existing in andthrough its exchanges with other nations and races. By association with traditionalnationalist values, but also in terms with the political climate of the period, racial

anthropology opened onto racist and anti-Semitic questions. It is for this reasonthat, towards the end of the 1930s, Romanian national anthropology more closelyresembled a political programme than scientific research. In the dialogue betweenscience and politics, the same motivations that universalised racial anthropologyalso nationalised it; the same developments that made craniometry fundamental toanthropology also gave rise to their championing within the contested field ofnational identification.

Documents

Craniometry and Racial Identity